With the number of households having multiple television sets increasing, and many users wanting the latest and greatest video viewing services, many households have multiple satellite receivers, cable set-top boxes, modems, et cetera. For in-home Internet access, each computer or Internet device has its own Internet connection. As such, each computer or Internet device includes a modem.
As an alternative, an in-home wireless local area network (LAN) may be used to provide Internet access and to communicate multimedia information to multiple devices within the home. In such an in-home local area network, each computer or Internet device includes a network card to access a server. The server provides the coupling to the Internet. The in-home wireless local area network can also be used to facilitate an in-home computer network that couples a plurality of computers with one or more printers, facsimile machines, as well as to multimedia content from a digital video recorder, set-top box, broadband video system, etc.
Many of these multimedia devices, such as television sets, cable television boxes, compact disk (CD) and digital video disk (DVD) players, have an associated remote control device that is provided when the device is purchased or that are universal remote control devices that are programmed to operate in conjunction with one or more multimedia devices. However, these remote control devices generally operate using infrared (IR) line or sight transmissions that require the remote control to be in the same room and pointed at the multimedia device, a configuration that does not lend itself to use in a multimedia network that may be spread out over a wider area.